Use this forum to have philosophical discussions about aesthetics and art. What is art? What is beauty? What makes art good? You can also use this forum to discuss philosophy in the arts, namely to discuss the philosophical points in any particular movie, TV show, book or story.

Greta wrote:Good music would seem to be part sincerity, part skill, part style and taste in balancing the musical elements - and the rest seems to just be chemistry.

Don't forget Je-ne-sais-quoi, that certain I don't know what.

-- Updated February 18th, 2016, 12:25 am to add the following --

Greta wrote:3ug, sorry, I didn't make my intent clear, expecting context to carry me through. By "dance ditties" I meant overcompressed formulaic plastic music. I wouldn't dismiss an entire genre - there are passionate and sincere artists in all styles.

I know you well enough to know that you would not be putting down dance music.

-- Updated February 18th, 2016, 12:57 am to add the following --

Scribbler60 wrote:
My musical tastes in high school were somewhat different from the norm. When everyone else was shaking their booty to Gloria Gaynor, KC and the Sunshine Band and Donna Summer, I (and a few other geek types) were pondering existence to the soundtrack of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Rush, Gentle Giant, Yes, Genesis and other prog legends.

Why me and my friends - all musicians, by the way - gravitated to prog when the rest of the world seemed to be going all Bee Gees is a mystery.

I just read a novel about a musical family that mentioned how clannish we were, musical appreciation was tribal during that time, defining. Now the musical scene is much more open minded, at least that's what I find.

This book also mentioned a time, must have been in the 50s when pop music went 1-4-5. This is a simple cord structure almost every song used. It's simple, very simple, pretty satisfying to the unsophisticated listener. And boy were we unsophisticated. You guys were beyond that and coming along a bit later. I still like a lot of 1-4-5 songs but there was a lot of crap too -- very popular crap.

Compared to the Tin Pan Alley writers (Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, etc) and the big band writers and arrangers, the new youth music was pretty thin stuff. Our parents were right for the most part.

This was also the time of the acceptance of the music of the African Diaspora, which changed forever the culture of the U.S. Our parents generation was wrong on that one.

I'm that predictable? :) Speaking of predictability, it is an important aspect of music - balancing novelty with the familiar.

Jazz is not very popular because its patterns are more difficult to discern than those of most styles. In fact, exceptionally oblique syncopation is highly valued for is freshness, as compared with more "on the beat" playing. This is known as "hiding the one" ("the one" being the first beat of a bar - the "one", when counting 1, 2, 3, 4). Naive listeners especially will be disoriented by the rhythmic trickery and at times they will lose their place in trying to follow the form (often 12, 16 and 24 bar cycles). That disorientation creates tension, which will ideally be almost orgiastically released after a sustained period, and then will before building again.

To most people, though, it's just self indulgent expressionist noodling that doesn't make much sense.